An even more extreme example of America's crazy history with race is Walter White (not the drug maker), the head of the NAACP from the 1930s to the 1950s:



He had white skin, blue eyes and blond hair. Of his 32 great-great-great grandparents, only 5 were black. All members of his immediate family had fair skin and his mother was a blue-eyed blonde. Yet because of his mixed ancestry he was considered Negro, which he identified with -- except when he passed for white.